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Grimgrog Guide

Grimrog is a versatile healer with an arsenal that includes fear, blind, slow, and silence. However you feel about Grimrog, though, there is no doubt that he is viable with just about any non-healing bloodline and in any bracket. Let’s start off with some strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Heals quickly so it’s more forgiving when you miss.

Curses provide a lot of utility/flexibility

Hard to kill, as all of his skills double back as escapes/incapacitates.

Ex abilities (heal reversal/incap) are extremely powerful.

Healing Ward grants powerful AOE heals and is immune to AoE damage.

Managing curses and activates can be complex.

Lowest heal value in the game.

No buff/debuffwith left click, making it viable only when used with Claw Flurry.

Healing Ward is an easy target for experienced opponents.

Difficult to manage offense/defense with a melee healer.

Claw Attack (M1): Generic attack with no buff/debuff mechanics. Try avoid using this unless it’s in conjunction with Claw Flurry.

Wicked Blessing (M2): Applies a Blessing of Kojo in addition to healing, which reduces cool downs by +4% per stack (max 3 stacks). Prioritize healing your teammates, and used your reduced cool downs to support your team first over anything.

Grimgol’s Gate (Space): Summons two portals in front of him after a .25s delay. Portals close after 3s or one use. Cast it with Shift + Space to portal just yourself. Portal yourself across bridges/behind obstacles to escape pressure. Cast it on enemies to remove them from the fight, or on allies to bail them out.

Healing Ward (Q): Reduces damage (-20%) and heals (40hp/0.5s) all allies standing in its radius. Influence the flow of battle by casting it ahead of your teammates to lead them. Protip – the ward blocks projectiles. Use it to block incoming pressure (e.g. charged attacks).

Curse of Silence (E): Damages (170) and silences targets, locking their abilities for 2 seconds. Use this on a healer to cut off your opponents’ support, or in a combo/team strike to prevent enemies from escaping.

Curse of Weakness (F): Deals 250-450 AOE damage, inflicts Curse of Weakness. Reduces healing and damage by 30% for 6 whole seconds. Hit them with a heal to dish 100 damage and fear them for 1.5 seconds. The enormous range allows for some devastating, cross-map snipes.

Deals 120 damage and inflicts Dark Voodoo, the bane of the every healer’s existence. Dark voodoo turns healing into damage, and caps at a max of 170. That’s up to 300 damage, not counting the punishment you can deal them when they are panicking without their heal. A great weapon that shines in 1v1 and 2v1 situations.

Rampage – EX2 (Claw Flurry)

Cast Time: .2s Cooldown: 8s Range: 66 Energy Cost: 40%

Dash towards a target, and deal 80-180 damage depending on distance traveled. The Grimrog then enters a state of madness, attacking his enemies over 2 seconds with 6 consecutive attacks, each dealing 30 damage and incapacitating for 0.2 seconds. Use this against an enemy who doesn’t have trance available. Use it to lock your opponents in place while dealing ~250 – plus the punishment your teammates will lay down on stun-locked victim.

Curses

Activating curses simply requires you to hit a Wicked Blessing (M2) directly onto an enemy. Here’s what they do:

Curse of Silence – Consumes Curse of Silence and applies Madness to self, which is the same thing Claw Flurry gives you (hint hint, double madness!). Note: It doesn’t stack, I just suggest using madness one after the other, if your team is pressure-free.

Curse of Kojo – Consumes Curse of Kojo and inflicts a 2 second blind. I seriously can’t convey to you how awesome this curse is. Hopefully you’ll get an idea once you read some strategies.

Curse of Weakness – Consumes Curse of Weakness dealing 100 damage and inflicting fear for 1.5s. Damage breaks this effect. If you’re very low, make it a priority to hit this (preferably while in a healing ward) and then get everyone up. If not, wait about 4 seconds to get the bonus from weaken and then fear them.

Strategies:

This section will be just a bunch of random tactics that you should employ or at least attempt to.

• Silence > Flurry: Effective combo, use it wherever possible. You simply hit a silence, claw flurry in, smack your enemy 3 times or so, then activate the curse for a blind. This last action allows you to portal out without your enemy knowing where you went. Not only are you dealing a large chunk of damage, you smoothly re-position yourself to a better location and set yourself up for the next combo.

• Silence > Curse of Weakness: This is a simple combo, but one which requires quite a bit of aim. This is best used on a bigger bloodline and you should avoid using it on bloodlines like astronomer and gunner. Basically, you hit someone with a silence and immediately follow up with your ultimate. It pretty much guarantees that they’ll get hit by it because the silence inhibits their ability to escape it. The only thing they can do is try to dodge it, but you’ll hit them. You’re better than them! I know you are!

• Fear > Silence > Flurry:This is essentially a more deadly version of the first combo I described. Hit your enemy with a fear and they proceed to run away from you, giving you a guaranteed silence in the back. Assuming you have full traits/gems, this should deal around 230 damage. Follow that up immediately with a Claw Flurry and you’ll do devastating damage in a small amount of time (Don’t forget to blind if possible!).

• Fake-casting: This is more of a general BLC tactic, but you must utilize it with Grimrog to beat most good teams. The only abilities you can fake cast effectively are your Silence (E) and your Ultimate (F). Most melee who are training your face off are going to panic and hit their trance the second they see your silence animation. That means, for the most part (don’t do this if you’re at 10% hp or something), cast your silence then cancel it about half-way through. Then, while they waste their trance, time a second silence to hit them directly afterwards. This is the same with bloodlines such as Harbinger, who will shift when he sees you cast it. Time your silence so that it will hit him right when he gets out. This goes for your ultimate, as well. There is almost never a time to just cast your ultimate without fake-casting it first. However, you shouldn’t need to do it very much. If you let them know you have it, and you know they’re looking for it, hold it until they are distracted – then unleash on them.

• Healing Ward Strategies: There are several neat tricks you can do with Healing Ward. First, use it to block dangerous, incoming projectiles. It might sound dumb, wanting your totem to die, but it beats being hit by an entangling roots or a deadly injection. Every hit counts, and if you can avoid one, that’s all the more of an advantage for you and your team. Make it a habit to hide behind your totem whenever you place it. You never know when it will save your life with a block. Depriving the enemy of energy is extremely important, and totem blocks accomplishes that also.

Yet another survival tactic when being harassed by melee is to place a healing ward a little bit out of range of you, claw flurry to the ward, and blind them. This accomplishes two things; you just escaped pressure into a healing ward that is in no immediate danger of dieing, and you just blinded your enemy, further cementing the safety of your ward. This is an extremely effective tactic because most enemies will expect you to simply place your ward right in front of you, where they can easily destroy it.

It’s impossible to have a perfect ward every time, but there are certain times that are better than others to use it. You don’t necessarily want to use it on cooldown. You definitely want to use it when your team is getting smashed, but keep in mind what cooldowns your partner has. Whenever you’re placing a totem, make sure that your team will be in it. If you’re not next to each other, place it in the middle of you so that you’re both at least on the edges of it. Not only does this heal both, but it makes it inefficient for an enemy melee to go out of their way to kill it considering the fact that it’s out of swinging range.

• Portal Tactics: The portal is perhaps Grimrog’s most important skill. If used correctly, enemies won’t be able to touch you. If used incorrectly, you’ll simply lose and get verbally shit on by your teammates. There’s really not any specific way I can tell you to use your portal, because honestly it’s mostly experience and preference. One major thing to keep in mind, though, is that if timed well, a portal can negate certain abilities like Venom Lunge (Ranid’s ultimate). If you get hit with something like that or deadly injection, just watch the debuff counter and portal somewhere when it’s at like 0.5s or so. You’re immaterial while traveling through portals, so this will completely negate all of the damage and effects. Master this and you’ll be even more frustrating to kill! You can use your portal offensively or defensively, but for the most part I would suggest keeping it for defense or to get back into position. For the most part, you want to try to predict what an enemy is going to do, and then portal away while they completely whiff. Like I mentioned in the weaknesses section, this takes quite a bit of BLC experience to get the hang of, but it’s absolutely worth the practice.

I’d like to write a section here about using your portal for others instead of yourself. In the original guide, I neglected this strategy…I now treasure it. Let’s just set up a scenario. You’re playing with an Igniter, and the enemy team (let’s say Stormcaller, Thorn, Pomp) continually switches on him. Every time, he panics and wastes his defenses. The Stormcaller sees this and puts a Hailstorm + Webi combo right on top of the poor guy and begin blasting him with M1’s. You see this, place your cursor on top of the Igniter, and use your space. He immediately is portaled back to you, literally saving his life and probably the round. There are countless situations where you want to use this. For example, Thorns almost always follow up a pull after they hit someone with their root. Well, if the situation dictates that you are relatively safe, portal him out from the pull. That just took away any and all momentum thorn had and saved about half your teams hp. Another, against astro. They always follow up their CC with a Moon Burst. Well, teleport your friend out of that and watch him whiff. I’ve even saved my teammate from ultimates like Seeker’s or Ranid’s by timing the space with the ultimate, negating it completely. There are so many ways you can use this, but it is far from easy. Practice and practice and practice, and I guarantee that your skill as a Grimrog altogether will skyrocket. It’s a very satisfying feeling to pull this off.

A very, very important note here: if you use your Shift Portal when getting simultaneously getting knocked back, you will get knocked out of your portal. This is especially dangerous when getting pulled by Thorn. If you use your portal in the middle of it, you’ll lose it and take an immense amount of damage. Your portal is the key to survival, and losing a cooldown is devastating. This is the same with any knockback, so be very careful when playing bloodlines with quick knockbacks or pulls (i.e. Reaver, Igniter, Thorn, Metal Warden).

That about wraps up my guide. Hopefully I convince some people to start playing this guy, because he’s possibly the most underrated bloodline at the moment. I’ll keep updating this guide as I see fit. If you desire the answer to any questions that weren’t answered in this guide, feel free to send a PM to Finlev in-game. I will be happy to help. Thanks for reading!